The increase in working women and children in 1908 over 1907, shown by these statistics, does not mean that conditions are such that those who ought to remain at home and take care of domestic affairs must go out into the world and toil, but in reality is due to an increase in the number of establishments in which the light, delicate touch of a gentle hand is needed, instead of strength, endurance, and mechanical labor.... It is necessary to state here that while the canning industry of Missouri is still in its infancy, the year 1908 was probably the best the State has ever had in this line, and that is why more employees were needed. . . . The increase in child labor was not due to the stringency, the increased cost of living, or to the poorer condition of the masses, but, instead, to an increased demand for these workers from the new canneries and shoe factories. Both these lines have a class of very light work, suitable only for boys and girls, which does not pay enough weekly for older persons. This assertion is not made in defence of child labor, but merely to explain why it exists in canneries and shoe factories.1

The explanation sounds very similar to that offered in the Southern States. It accounts, as far as it goes, for the employment of children in canneries: an agricultural community is the natural location for the canning industry, outside labor is scarce in rural districts and the canning season is short. No local advantage for the shoe factories, however, exists in rural Missouri. The centre of the shoe manufacturing industry is Massachusetts, which in 1905 contributed 45 per cent of the total output of the United States. The seat of the shoe-manufacturing industry of Missouri is St. Louis, whose output increased from 74 per cent of the total for the State in 1899 to 81 per cent in 1904.4

3

› Reports of the Missouri Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1909, pp. 320-321. "The cotton mills were the most powerful opponents [of the Louisiana child-labor law], ably seconded by the canning industries. To hear the representatives of both these industries, one, not knowing any better, would have been convinced that the most healthful, remunerative, educational place in the entire world in which to develop children was in a cotton mill or an oyster cannery. One fairly tingled to spend the rest of life shucking oysters or peeling shrimp." Supplement, Annals of the Am. Acad. of Political and Social Science, March, 1909. Jean M. Gordon: The Forward Step in Louisiana, p. 163.

3 Census Report, Manufactures. 1905, Part I., p. ccxxx. 4 Ibid., pp. ccxxx. and ccxxxi. (computed).

The principal inducement for locating new shoe factories in rural sections of Missouri appears to be the availability of cheap labor of native American women and children, who can underbid the male immigrants employed in the shoe factories of Massachusetts.

CHAPTER XV

LABOR ORGANIZATIONS

THE Immigration Commission has made the statement that "the recent immigrant has not, as a rule, affiliated himself with labor unions, unless compelled to do so as a preliminary step toward acquiring work. . . . Where he has united with the labor organizations he has usually refused to maintain his membership for any extended period of time, thus rendering difficult the unionizing of the occupation or industry in which he has been engaged." This assertion could be proved only by a statistical study of the membership of labor organizations. It is a characteristic fact that with a Federal Bureau of Labor and a number of State labor bureaus we have no compilation of the total number of organized workers in the United States for a series of years. A great deal of information on the subject is scattered in the published reports of labor conventions. The inevitable gaps could be supplied from the records of labor organizations. The Immigration Commission, however, made no effort to secure statistics of union membership in a systematic way from official sources, but confined its inquiries in the main to the heads of the households covered by its investigation. The report of the Commission contains data concerning 3325 trade unionists, whereas the total membership of labor organizations in the United States was estimated for 1910 at 2,625,000. The reports of the Commission contain a few fragmentary data on the membership of labor organizations, apparently obtained from their

* Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. xvii., p. xviii. •New York Labor Bulletin, September, 1911, p. 418.

officials, but these data flatly contradict the conclusions of the Commission.

We learn that "practically 36 per cent of the total number of clothing workers in New York are organized; while 80 per cent of the cutters are members of the cutters' union. Of the organized workers, about 60 per cent are Russian and Polish Hebrews, 30 per cent Italians, and 10 per cent persons of other races including foreign and native-born."'* To understand the meaning of these percentages, we must compare them with the percentage of organized workers in all industries. The total number of male industrial wageearners in the United States at the census of 1900 can be estimated at 8,600,0002; since very few women are affiliated with labor organizations the number of males alone need be taken into consideration in computing the percentage of organized workers. The increase of the population of the United States from 1900 to 1910 was 21 per cent. The number of male industrial wage-earners in 1910 can accordingly be estimated at 10,400,000, and the proportion of organized workingmen in all industries at 25 per cent. Thus while, on an average, only 25 per cent of all male wage-earners in the United States were affiliated with labor organizations, among the clothing workers in New York City 36 per cent were organized, all but one tenth of the organized workers being Russian and Polish Hebrews and Italians. Of the most skilled among them, the cutters, 80 per cent were members of their union, i.e., relatively thrice as many as in all industries of the country at large.

Of course, the question is whether the condition in the clothing industry of New York may be accepted as typical. The reports of the Immigration Commission furnish no comparable data for the industries of the country at large. The results of the study of households comprise less than two trade-unionists in every 1000. Still, this being the only

1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 11, p. 388.

2

I. A. Hourwich, "Social-Economic Classes of the Population of the United States," Journal of Political Economy, March, 1911, p. 205.

statistical evidence which the Immigration Commission has produced in support of its conclusions regarding the attitude of recent immigrants toward trade unions, it is worthy of note that upon the Commission's own showing tradeunionism is as strong among the immigrants as among the native American workmen. The ratio of organized workers to all male wage-earners in each population group is shown in Table 96.

While on the whole trade-unionism is very weak in the field covered by the investigation of the Commission, it is manifest from the practical uniformity of the percentages for each group that distinctions of birth, race, and color do not explain this weakness.

Neither could a line be drawn in respect of unionism between the "desirable" immigrants from Northern and Western Europe and the "undesirable aliens from Southern and Eastern Europe. "This fact is brought to light by the comparison in Table 97 of the principal immigrant races that are represented by at least 500 persons each in the statistics of the Immigration Commission. On the whole, the average percentage of union men among the "undesirable aliens" is higher than among the immigrants of the preferred races.

1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 1, p. 417.

⚫ Smaller groups have been omitted because, where the numbers are small, the ratios are liable to be influenced by exceptional circumstances and local conditions; for example, the highest percentage of organized workmen, 100 per cent, was found among the Mexicans, because the investigators of the Commission chanced to come across 56 Mexican miners in a unionized mine.-Ibid., pp. 418-419.